The ordinary "white bread woman," as Comedian Carol Burnett describes herself, chomped happily on corn-bread--not to mention black-eyed peas. Carol was down in Tennessee taping a CBS Valentine's Day special, Dolly and Carol in Nashville, with sweet-singing, statuesque Dolly Parton. As Grand Ole Opry fiddlers sawed away, the odd couple careened bravely through the lyrics of No One Can Pick Like a Nashville Picker Picks and No One Can Kick Like a Nashville Kicker Kicks. "I'm going crackers with that picks and kicks thing," grumbled Burnett. Nevertheless, she thinks she and the queen of country music make a perfect pair. Deadpans Burnett: "I trim my eyelashes and bind myself every morning so that people can tell us apart."

Boston Outfielder Jim Rice wanted to think it over, but his wife Corine kept telling him "Sign now!" Which is how Rice, 25, became the highest-paid player in Red Sox history. Under the terms of a new contract announced last week, he will get more than $5 million over the next seven years, making him second in earnings in major league history only to Third Baseman Pete Rose, who just signed a four-year, $3.5 million deal with the Philadelphia Phillies. "I probably could have got more," said the American League's MVP for 1978, "but I think it's a disadvantage being the highest-paid player because everybody is on you all the time."

After the other big guns headed back to Germany, England and France, respectively, from the Guadeloupe summit, the Carters lingered on for a brief loll in the sun. The President and his wife jogged and fished for barracuda (Rosalym caught a bigger one than Jimmy). But the recreational high point came when the Carters and Daughter Amy decided to try scuba diving. "Does the President know how to scuba?" asked a worried reporter. "God, I hope so," answered Press Secretary Jody Powell. In fact, Jimmy managed to stay under for a respectable 35 minutes. "Did you bring back anything?" he was asked. "Sunburn," said the President succinctly. As for why Carter took the plunge, one wag suggested that the idea for the President's scuba-diving expedition had come from Vice President Walter Mondale.

"My sister Carolyn," Painter Andrew Wyeth once said, is a "person of many sides: bitterness, love--awfully difficult, but quite a person." Quite a private one too. Carolyn has painted all her life. Unlike celebrated Brother Andrew or her father, Illustrator N.C. Wyeth, or Nephew Jamie, a high-priced painter at 32, Carolyn has rarely shown her works. "I hate fame," she says. "I hate money." But at age 69, she seems to be courting both. A retrospective of her paintings (priced between $6,500 and $12,000) is now on display at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pa. The new visibility, however, does not mean that Carolyn plans to break her policy and see the exhibits of other artists. "They bore me," she says.

After three terms as Alabama Governor, and a decade as the redneck gadfly of American politics, George Corley Wallace, 59, was taking a break, and a crowd of 4,000 gathered in Montgomery to say goodbye. "I don't know whether there'll be any political future or not," Wallace told them, "so I'll just say so long for a while and God bless you." Earlier he had listened teary-eyed to words of tribute. "You might be sitting in that chair today, but to those of us who love you, you still stand and walk mighty tall," said Jamie Etheredge, mayor of Greenville. To be sure the fiery little politician left the corridors of power in style, the fans presented him with a black Lincoln Continental sedan.

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